Model T Production Numbers by Year, 1908 to 1927

This piece sets out both tables, explains where they differ, and shows what the numbers say about the car's rise and decline. How the factory reached those volumes is a separate subject; there is more on that here.

The two sources for Model T production by year

The first source is the Ford Production Department table dated 3 August 1927, about ten weeks after the last American Model T, and widely reproduced since. It gives US Model T production, and for 1909 to 1920 it uses Ford's fiscal year. That fiscal year ran October to September until 1913; the 1914 fiscal year covered only ten months, October 1913 to July 1914; after that it ran August to July. The table then adds a five-month stub for August to December 1920 and uses calendar years from 1921, which is why 1920 appears twice.

The second is the table of Ford car production compiled by the historians Allan Nevins and Frank Hill, as published in The Henry Ford's research guide. It counts US-built Ford cars only, with trucks in a separate column. It is not labelled "Model T," but Ford built no other car in those years. Its early years are also fiscal years, although the guide prints them as plain years.

Read side by side, the two tables share several identical figures: 170,211, 202,667, 308,162 and 501,462. The Production Department table puts them under 1913 to 1916; Nevins and Hill put them under 1912 to 1915. The offset runs on to 1920 once trucks are added back: Nevins and Hill's 1919 cars plus trucks come to exactly 941,042, the factory's fiscal year from August 1919 to July 1920, and their 1920 row plus trucks gives 463,451, the factory's August to December 1920. So these are the same fiscal periods under different labels. The factory names each fiscal year by the year it ended; the Nevins and Hill table, as printed, names it by the year it began. Neither set of numbers is wrong, but a Nevins and Hill row before 1921 should not be read as a calendar year. For 1909 to 1911 the two tables also differ slightly in the figures themselves.

From 1921 on, when both tables use calendar years, the Production Department figure is consistently the higher one. The reason is scope, and the arithmetic shows it: add the truck column from the same Nevins and Hill table to their car figure and you get the factory number to the car for every calendar year from 1921 to 1926, except 1925, where the two differ by one. The same check works on the offset fiscal rows back to 1916. For 1923, 1,817,891 cars plus 193,234 trucks makes 2,011,125. Nevins and Hill count cars only; the factory table counts every US Model T chassis, trucks included. Only 1927 does not reconcile: the factory table's 399,725 is lower than Nevins and Hill's cars plus trucks, so treat any 1927 figure with care. Otherwise neither table is wrong. They answer different questions.

The climb: 1908 to 1916

The start was slow. The first production Model T was completed at the Piquette Avenue plant on 27 September 1908, and only 11 cars were built in the first full month. About 12,000 Model Ts came out of Piquette before production moved to Highland Park, where most work was under way by January 1910.

Then the curve bends. On either table, output roughly doubles year on year through the early 1910s, and by 1916 it passes half a million. In 1914 Ford built more cars than all other automakers combined. The moving assembly line, the Highland Park plant and the steady price cuts described in this piece all show up in these rows. So does the choice of materials; for the background on why the car held up well enough to sell in those numbers, see the article on vanadium steel.

The peak: 1923 and the 2 million figure

The Production Department table puts calendar 1923 at 2,011,125, the only year above two million and the high point of the whole run. Nevins and Hill give 1,817,891 for the same year, and The Henry Ford's own feature uses about 1.8 million. Those are cars only; the extra 193,234 are trucks. The difference is a matter of basis rather than error, and 2,011,125 is the figure to use for total US Model T production.

The daily rate is quoted as 9,000 to 10,000 cars a day in 1925, about 2 million a year. That annual figure is close to the factory table's 1,911,705 for 1925, which already includes trucks, so it is best read as a rounded rate rather than an exact count. The 10 millionth Ford, a Model T, was built in June 1924.

Volume on this scale depended on selling as well as building. The role of the dealer network in moving that many cars is covered separately.

"When two production tables disagree, look at the year labels before you look at the numbers. Most Model T 'discrepancies' are a fiscal year sitting next to a calendar year."

Tom Ramirez

The decline and the final count

After 1923 the numbers fall every year: 1,922,048 in 1924, 1,911,705 in 1925, 1,554,465 in 1926, on the factory table. Ford announced the end of the Model T on 25 May 1927, and the 15 millionth car left the Highland Park line the next day, 26 May, driven by Henry and Edsel Ford. US production for 1927 stopped at 399,725.

The world total is where the confusion usually starts. Adding up the factory's US table gives 14,689,525. Ford's own count, marked by the 15 millionth car, was "more than 15 million." The gap is foreign and Canadian output. Canada's best Model T year was 1926, with 100,611 built, and Trafford Park in Manchester built about 150,000 Model Ts in total. Exact world totals of 15,007,034 and 15,007,033 both circulate; they differ by one, and neither comes from a Ford primary document, so "more than 15 million" remains the accurate statement.

The car also outlived its own production line. The last Model T built anywhere came from Cork, Ireland, in December 1927. Ford kept making Model T engines until 4 August 1941, almost 170,000 of them after car production ended. The total stood as the record for a single model until the Volkswagen Beetle passed it on 17 February 1972.

For the full sequence from the T to its successor, read the Model T and Model A history. And because so many were built, a good number survive and still change hands; there are surviving Model Ts for sale from most of the years in the table above.

Sources and notes

• The Henry Ford, Benson Ford Research Center: Ford production figures (Nevins and Hill)
• Wikipedia: Ford Model T (Ford Production Department table, 1927)
• The Henry Ford: Advertising the Model T
• Grace's Guide: Ford cars built at Trafford Park
• Ford: The Model T